WI: Nintendo and Sony were on the same team

[CrashBandicam]

As you may know, Nintendo made a deal with Sony in 1988 to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, as well as a SNES-compatible CD-based console called the PlayStation. However, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi began to grow wary of Sony and deemed the deal unacceptable upon realising that it gave Sony control over all the games for the SNES-CD, so he sent Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa and chairman Howard Lincoln to the Netherlands to negotiate a more favourable deal with Philips, Sony's rival. Nintendo and Sony then attempted to sort out their differences, but in the end, the rift between the two was never repaired and Sony would later go on to release their own console, the PlayStation.

But what if Nintendo didn't drop Sony for Philips and instead renegotiated terms with Sony and the two stayed as partners? How would that happen? How would that affect the gaming industry? How would Sega fare against the duo of Nintendo-Sony? Would Microsoft still enter the console race?

 

[Evil Crusader]

SNES-CD fails every bit as much as the CD-I or the Mega CD did, so the bigger impact likely is a slower success for the CD medium in the game world without Sony's Playstation championing it. Microsoft will still want to enter the market, but a bigger encouragement was the end of the Dreamcast that left some space for a third pretender to come into the fray.

 

[CrashBandicam]

SNES-CD fails every bit as much as the CD-I or the Mega CD did, so the bigger impact likely is a slower success for the CD medium in the game world without Sony's Playstation championing it. Microsoft will still want to enter the market, but a bigger encouragement was the end of the Dreamcast that left some space for a third pretender to come into the fray.

Would Nintendo stay with Sony or would the two split up after the failure of the SNES-CD?

 

[Marco Incognito]

I recommend looking up Player Two Start and it’s sequels. They go into great detail about this.

 

[CountDVB]

From what I read, I think Sony would’ve gone into the console business on its own regardless, here it just because a point of contention.

Hence unsure how it could be on same team. Granted, if the project failed to get off the ground because of mundane things out of people’s control like budget concerns, accidents and so on, there would be a lot less bad blood me thinks

 

[CrashBandicam]

If Nintendo and Sony hadn't split up, could we see the two release consoles that are basically a mix between Nintendo's more gimmicky consoles from OTL and Sony's more traditional OTL consoles?

 

[CrashBandicam]

As you may know, Nintendo made a deal with Sony in 1988 to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES, as well as a SNES-compatible CD-based console called the PlayStation. However, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi began to grow wary of Sony and deemed the deal unacceptable upon realising that it gave Sony control over all the games for the SNES-CD, so he sent Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa and chairman Howard Lincoln to the Netherlands to negotiate a more favourable deal with Philips, Sony's rival. Nintendo and Sony then attempted to sort out their differences, but in the end, the rift between the two was never repaired and Sony would later go on to release their own console, the PlayStation.

But what if Nintendo didn't drop Sony for Philips and instead renegotiated terms with Sony and the two stayed as partners? How would that happen? How would that affect the gaming industry? How would Sega fare against the duo of Nintendo-Sony? Would Microsoft still enter the console race?

Would it be possible for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to join forces in the early 2000s had Nintendo and Sony been on the same team?